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Desert Island Stuff
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'Doc Birdbath,' Spike Jones'
I recently found this business card in a bundle of other business cards I have saved over the years. It brought back some fond memories of meeting a truly wonderful, gracious member of old Hollywood's characters. It was handed to me by the one and only Dr. Horatio Q. Birdbath, whose real name, A. Purvis Pullens, is perhaps just as funny as the one Spike Jones gave him when he joined the City Slickers. When I met Birdbath some time in the late '80s, Doc told me that when he spoke with Jones on the phone to discuss joining the group, Spike spontaneously came up with the name. Spike explained the reasoning.... "Horatio" as in Hornblower - thanks to Doc's whistling, "Q" stood for "Quinine," Spike said, "because you're so hard to take," and "Birdbath" thanks to Doc's talents created vivid, amusing and highly believable bird sounds. These sounds were good enough to be used on Disney cartoons like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in the Tiki Room at Disneyland. And they'd be good enough, as well, to make Birdbath a prominent member of the legendary group of musical genius comedians. One of my fondest memories from meeting Doc was a song he sang while sitting at the piano. It was a bawdy little number he said he had recorded with Bing Crosby in the 1930s. It was very funny, and set Crosby's goodie-two-shoe's reputation on its ear. No matter how many records, cds and MP3s you collect, it's the moments like that one, fleeting and gone forever, that seem to have the most weight. When Doc passed away I got a call from Stuart Walthall, my guitar teacher, who had been following Doc's health concerns for some time. It was a sad day but I know Doc had a long and productive life. He'd spent many years as a sort of public ambassador at the Nut Tree, a roadside attraction between Sacramento and the Bay Area which itself passed away a few years ago.
The Famulous On Line Is Joe Petard a Drag Queen?
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Performing as Triskellion, John &
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Strange
but True History! 
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